The Glasgow Crime Story of Eleni Pachou who was murdered in her work Di Maggio's

Hours later the answer came as police officers swooped on Di Maggio's Pizzeria in Ruthven Lane, just off Byres Road, shortly before 8:30am the next day.

There more than 13 years ago they found the blood stained and battered body of 25-year-old Eleni Pachou on the kitchen floor.

Eleni had moved to Scotland 30 months earlier from her home in Athens, Greece, to make a new life for herself following the death of her mother.

She quickly made friends and excelled at her job and was promoted to trainee manager.

The young Greek woman had been brutally stabbed to death and around £1300 stolen from one of two restaurant safes.

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Strathclyde Police launched a major investigation and manhunt for the person responsible.

Around 100 uniform and detective officers were put on the case, working around the clock.

Over the next few weeks detectives spoke to more than 2000 people including 1,700 motorists, 80 taxi drivers and 400 pedestrians, hoping to jog people's memories.

However no one had seen anything of significance that night. Though neighbours spoke of that single piercing scream.

As the police investigation progressed a clearer picture of Eleni emerged and her terrifying last moments.

She had become friends with former assistant manager Juan Carlos Crispin, 37, who was married with two children and lived in the north side of the city.

He had left to work at Cafe Andaluz in St Vincent Street, part of the Di Maggio chain, but the pair kept in touch.

On the night of May 29, 2008, Crispin had asked if he could meet her after work for a drink and catch up at Ruthven Lane.

He joined her around midnight after the last customer left.

They laughed and joked for about an hour with Crispin drinking beer and Eleni, Rum and Coke.

Suddenly and without warning Crispin pulled on a pair of gloves and stabbed her in the back, neck and face.

Eleni was knifed a total of 17 times with heavy force, cutting through her face, spleen, kidney and other internal organs.

The deepest wound penetrated five inches and passed through her lung, diaphragm, and into her liver.

The stabs were so hard that the handle of the £4 kitchen knife, bought from a nearby Woolworths in Byres Road, broke off during the attack.

What Eleni hadn't known was that her friend and work colleague was in serious financial difficulties with debts of almost £14,000.

He thought, wrongly, that she had the keys to the restaurant's main safe, which could have held up to £10,000 in cash.

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Instead he left Di Maggio's that night with £1320, having been unable to access the second safe in the pizzeria.

The 37-year-old had moved to Glasgow 12 years earlier after meeting a Scottish woman on the holiday island of Gran Canaria where he lived. They set up own together and had two children.

It then emerged that Marion Hinshelwood, 44, who was a cleaner at Di Maggio's Ruthven Lane outlet, was in on the plot to kill her.

She and Crispin had been having a passionate and stormy affair for around two years.

Hinshelwood checked the rota for Crispin to make sure that Eleni was on duty that night and on her own. She had even bought the knife to be used in the stabbing.

Hinshelwood would be the person who would find the body when she reported for work and who would then phone the police.

In the immediate aftermath, Crispin made repeated calls to his lover telling her to stay calm and tell police nothing Hinshelwood, whose son was at private school, also had money worries after her former partner's business collapsed and she was in arrears on her rent and to the school.

However Crispin had made a crucial mistake in the fatal stabbing attack.

He had used such force that the knife had plunged into his right thumb.

This then ripped the glove that he wore, which allowed his blood to mingle with that of his victim's.

When details of Eleni's murder became public, Crispin told colleagues that he had cut his thumb on a meat slicer after visiting her at the restaurant the night she died.

However the police weren't fooled and they quickly unravelled the various pieces of the tangled web that had been weaved. including the phone calls made by Crispin to Hinshelwood.

There was also a minefield of incriminating forensic evidence against him.

Crispin's DNA was found on the victim's left cheek and on the strap of the rucksack she was wearing when she was killed.

It was was also found mixed with Eleni's on the safe, the safe key and the floor.

In June that year the two work colleagues appeared at Glasgow Sheriff Court charged with murder.

In a dramatic twist in December 2008 at the High Court in Glasgow Hinshelwood pled guilty to the reduced charge of culpable homicide for her part in setting up Eleni.

She had struck the plea deal in exchange for give evidence against her former lover.

In May, 2009, Crispin stood trial for Eleni's murder at the High Court in Glasgow.

Hinshelwood told of how he robbed the restaurant and killed Eleni.

She also admitted she was in debt, but said: "Not that desperate to kill someone."

On the night of the murder Crispin had earlier left her flat with the knife she had bought him.

He returned at around 2.30am "agitated and sweating" with the same knife, which was missing its handle, and a bag of money.

She also confirmed that minutes after she found Eleni's body, Crispin phoned her on her mobile.

Hinshelwood said:"He asked me are the police there and told me not to panic or say anything.

"I said I couldn't speak and hung up."

The court was told that in the six days following Ms Pachou's death, Crispin phoned her more than 20 times.

The victim's brother Spiro, a naval architecture student at Glasgow University, said he wasn't happy that his sister held keys to the restaurant and locked up the premises alone late at night.

The jury were also told that Eleni probably fought for her life while being stabbed so many times.

They were also shown evidence that Crispin owed £13,524.51 to bank and credit card firms.

In his defence Crispin denied murdering Eleni and said she was still alive when he left the restaurant.

He claimed she had been stabbed to death by Hinshelwood, who then tried to frame him for the murder, because she was jealous of their friendship..

Crispin told the court he had no reason to kill Eleni because she was a "good friend"

He denied he was in financial difficulties at the time and that he had taken out a £4300 bank loan to pay for a summer holiday for his family in Gran Canaria.

The court also heard he had £42,000 equity on his family home and his mother had won 25,000 euros in a lottery in Gran Canaria in 2005.

Crispin insisted that if he had been in dire financial straits he could have approached his mother for money.

The jury were not convinced and took two-and-a-half hours to return a unanimous guilty verdict of murdering Eleni and robbing the restaurant.

The judge Lord Turnbull ordered Crispin to serve at least 20 years of a life sentence, before being eligible for parole.

He told the Spaniard:"What you then did to that young woman defies belief. You took her life in a torrent of determined, vicious and horrific blows."

The following month, also at the High Court in Glasgow, Hinshelwood was jailed for four and a half years, reduced from six years, because of her guilty plea six months earlier .

In August 2010 she was set free on parole having served half her sentence.

The previous year Crispin had failed in a bid to have his prison sentence reduced.

He claimed the 20-year minimum term he must serve of a life term was excessive.

But the judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh said the sentence was "entirely appropriate" even for a first offender.

In delivering their judgement Lady Paton, said:"It was a truly appalling and despicable crime with many aggravating features, not least that an accomplished young woman lost her life in a nightmare attack."